Environmental Health

"About 300 million children in the world breathe highly toxic air, the United Nations Children’s Fund said in a report on Monday that used satellite imagery to illustrate the magnitude of the problem."

"The Manchester community is one of several on Houston's east side that environmental activists say is concerned about chemical exposure. Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, or Tejas, has teamed up with the Center for Science and Democracy’s Union of Concerned Scientists to publish data they say supports their stance that living in communities near chemical plants and refineries can lead to deadly illnesses."

"Nearly nine months after Zika was declared a global health emergency, the virus has infected at least 650,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including tens of thousands of expectant mothers. But to the great bewilderment of scientists, the epidemic has not produced the wave of fetal deformities so widely feared when the images of misshapen infants first emerged from Brazil. Instead, Zika has left a puzzling and distinctly uneven pattern of damage across the Americas."

"More than 100 people were treated for respiratory problems after a chemical spill at an MGP Ingredients Inc facility on Friday generated a chemical cloud over the northeastern Kansas city of Atchison before authorities declared the threat over."

"The Environmental Protection Agency was slated to hold four days of public meetings focused on essentially one question: Is glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide and the lynchpin to Monsanto’s fortunes, as safe as Monsanto has spent 40 years telling us it is? But oddly, the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) meetings, called to look at potential glyphosate ties to cancer, were 'postponed' just four days before they were to begin Oct. 18, after intense lobbying by the agrichemical industry."

"If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may have seen ads urging you to vote 'no' on a grocery tax. 'Don't Tax Our Groceries' is the tagline of the $9.5 million campaign, which is funded by the American Beverage Association. ... But here's the thing. There's no grocery tax on the ballot."